If you’ve been reading my 12 O’Clock Tracks regularly, you’ve probably gathered that I love pop music—and that I’ll most likely love it even more if it’s from Ohio. Of all the Guided by Voices-worshiping indie-pop bands on the Ohio scene, the best known (and one of my all-time favorites) has to be Columbus’s Times New Viking. They channel their stripped-down, sub-lo-fi pop genius into nonstop bummer ballads, brimming with simple instrumentation and almost-flat harmonies. Their most recent album was last April’s excellent Dancer Equired!, which adds a bit more polish to their signature blown-out sound. (Fun fact: this record holds a special place in my heart—I wrote it up as a sort of “audition” for covering bands for the Reader.) Things have been pretty quiet at the TNV camp since Dancer dropped, and it almost seems like the band has dropped off. Drummer-vocalist Adam Elliott, however, resurfaced in May with his new band, Connections, and (surprise!) they sound a whole lot like Guided by Voices.